Using a telephone is something most people take for granted. The variety and quantity of telephony devices and telephone networks (e.g., landline, wireless, Internet, etc.) in use today illustrates how ubiquitous our need for communication is. Telephones are used to communicate emergency situations to the proper authorities, communicates needs, communicate other information and just to communicate. There is one segment of the population, however, that cannot communicate using commonly-available telephony devices.
Many individuals have one or more handicaps that prevent them from using common, everyday telephony devices. Over the past few years, some telephony devices that work in the context of the existing telephone network were developed to meet certain, specific needs. For example, telephones with large buttons are available for those with poor eyesight or difficulty in eye-hand coordination. Telephone devices for the deaf (“TDD's” as they are called in the art) provide a display and a keyboard to facilitate communication for the hearing impaired, speech impaired or both. These devices are a sample of currently available special-needs telephones. These devices, however, generally only assist an individual with one or a limited number of handicaps. Individuals with multiple handicaps, severe handicaps or both still cannot use these devices.
Therefore, a problem exists in the current art to facilitate telephonic communication for the severely handicapped. These individuals have the same needs to call for emergencies, call for needs and just to communicate as the rest of the population but have no means to use any of the available telecommunications networks.